With the end of the exception to European legislation on privacy in the digital world, children and adolescents will be even more exposed to sexual abuse. Abusers will have an easier time starting at 11:59 pm this Friday
It is with tears in her eyes that Ana França recalls, in an interview with TVI (from the same group as CNN Portugal), what happened to her son Martim (not his real name), aged 15, the eldest of two brothers and who has autism: “This person clearly manipulated my son. (…) What happened causes me enormous revolt”.
Like the overwhelming majority of teenagers, Martim and his 11-year-old brother spend hours playing online games. Parents have parental control and are aware of their children’s online lives. Therefore, they never thought that a predator would “knock on their door”.
Martim played Roblox almost every day. The game allows users to exchange messages, but with high restrictions: swearing, bullying and sharing of personal data such as address or telephone number are automatically blocked. The platform also does not allow direct sharing of images or files.
But sexual abusers always find a way. Martim made a ‘friend’ on Roblox, “Tiago”. Martim didn’t know, but “Tiago” was, in fact, an adult sexual predator who led him to install Discord, a free and highly encrypted communication platform, where it is easy to exchange messages and less appropriate images without being ‘caught’. “Tiago” started communicating with Martim from this platform.
“Another fictitious friend appears there, with a fictitious image, with a fictitious name, with a fictitious age. But he doesn’t have the term of comparison like an adult does. He can’t evaluate signs that would allow him to realize that that person is not a match”, reports Ana.
“As children are usually very effusive when they play, he started putting on headphones. And everything was fine with us, because the names we heard were familiar names. They didn’t arouse any kind of distrust”, he adds.
The alarm signal
The bells only rang when Martim’s father received a notification on his cell phone. Together, the children spent almost R$500 on games. Martim bought Robux, a type of currency, digital credit used within the game to make purchases.
What seemed to have no room to get worse turned into something more serious and a crime of child sexual abuse. “My children were with my parents and I received a call from my mother, very distressed, panicked, telling me that my father went to Martim’s room and heard an adult voice asking my son to masturbate. And my son doesn’t know what masturbation is. So this person was teaching my son how to do it. And this person asked for photos of his private parts”, remembers Ana.
Ana França knows that images were exchanged, because in Martim’s conversations with the supposed “Tiago” there are deleted images: “I can’t tell if they are photos or videos”. You also cannot understand exactly the content of these images. Just infer from the content of the conversations.
Platforms prohibited from acting
The case has been handed over to the Judiciary Police (PJ), but the difficulty in accessing data such as location, device identification and content of deleted conversations complicates the investigation. Most likely, “Tiago”, or whoever is behind the created character, will never be caught. But it is certain that, from midnight this Saturday, he will have an even easier time abusing other minors.
The derogation that allows platforms to voluntarily detect and report images with child pornography content ends at 11:59 pm this Friday. The end of this exception to European data protection legislation leaves children and adolescents much more exposed to danger.
“April 3rd will go down in history as a black page in children’s rights. And this page is signed by three entities – European Council, European Commission and European Parliament. Three entities that should precisely protect the rights of children and young people”, considers Tito de Morais, co-founder of the project.
From midnight, online platforms such as Meta or Tik Tok will again be banned from tracking images of child pornography and child abuse. Something they did voluntarily. Despite several attempts at agreement, the triad of the European Parliament, European Commission and European Council did not reach an agreement on the extension of the rules that allow platforms to carry out this tracking. This Friday is the last day that the current derogation is in force.
The story of an exception that comes to an end
The European directive on privacy in the digital world – 2002/58/EC – was adopted by the European Parliament and the European Council on July 12, 2002 and came into force on the 31st of that same month. The platforms, which until then had voluntarily screened and reported child pornography material, were prohibited from doing so due to the protection of users’ privacy, which was now protected.
European authorities recognized that the new legislation created a gap in the protection of children and young people in the digital world, leaving the issue open. For two years, almost all platforms continued to track a legislative no man’s land. Facebook stopped this process between 2022 and 2024 and the number of reports to the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) fell by almost 50% during this period, which shows that much of the child sexual abuse material was circulating on this platform.
In 2024, European authorities approved a derogation (partial repeal) of law 2002/58/EC valid for two years. An interim solution, until a definitive one was found. Two years later, the definitive solution did not come and the interim solution was not extended.
“We will enter an immediate legal void. The European directive on privacy in the digital world will be applied in its entirety and technology companies will be legally prohibited from carrying out voluntary screenings. They will even be subject to fines. Reports will drastically reduce”, warns Cristiane Miranda, co-founder of the Agarrados à Net project.
The investigation will be “more reactive than proactive” and many completed abuses – even abuses that begin in the online world and end in the offline world – will no longer be detected in a timely manner.
“If we listened to young people, I believe they would say that they want privacy, but they also want security. They don’t want to be watched, but they also don’t want to be victims”, highlights Cristiane.
A failure in protection that can become eternal
In an attempt to halt the process, more than 2,400 organizations have come together to warn of “the deeply alarming and irresponsible gap in child protection”. “We, a coalition of more than 2,464 organizations working to promote children’s rights and combat sexual violence, strongly condemn the failure of European policymakers to extend the legal basis that allowed these detection activities. This failure creates a deeply alarming and irresponsible gap in the protection of children. The consequences will be devastating – in Europe and beyond”, reads the joint statement, released this Wednesday.
“If this derogation was not approved because we have the Commission and the European Parliament with opposing views. Even if specific legislation is created, it will take months. As they have their backs, it is most likely that it won’t even happen”, fears Cristiane Miranda.
Therefore, the expert asks platforms to reinforce technology so that detection can be carried out without harming users’ privacy and parents to reinforce surveillance. “We want to use technology to protect children and not protect children from technology. Parents need to be increasingly attentive, monitor more and talk to their children more about this. They should take advantage of this news to talk to their children and alert them”, he emphasizes.
“It is necessary to pay attention to your children’s signs. Changes in behavior, for example. Any change in behavior indicates something. But you need to scrutinize whether it is related to something that is happening in your online life. Invest in parental controls that can detect conversation patterns. There are free parental control tools that are already very efficient. You need to explore them”, adds Cristiane Miranda.
“We protect our children in their offline lives. It is important that we also do so in their online lives”, he concludes.
And Cristiane Mirada also says she hopes that “families and associations protecting children and young people will take legal action against the European institutions that have allowed young people to become even more vulnerable” in the digital world.
